Technology Blog

Recently, I read an article about getting paid survey work from online sources. A click here and a click there and within a matter of minutes I landed on a “free” survey site. Surveys and claims that you can be compensated by participating in surveys have been around the internet for as long as I’ve been online. In fact, I’m sure that beside this blog entry, the adsense ads on this likely have advertisements to various survey websites.

The free survey website I went to yesterday guaranteed that if I completed their 10 buck challenge, they would promptly send 10 dollars plus a 3 dollar bonus for signing up straight into my paypal account. So, what did I have to lose?

What I lost was time and interest. I was amused by performing this stunt. I landed on sites for “free” ipods, “free” digital cameras, sign up incentives for casinos, sign up incentives for *other* survey sites. I was spinning around and around so fast, to various sites all pointing to similar survey sites, that it reminded me of landing on (or I confess) searching for adult related websites. It was the ultimate circle jerk. This is a rather vulgar metaphor, so rather than have you thinking I’m a dirty pervert, I’ll quote from my favorite website for information: Wikipedia.

They can refer to a situation, often in the workplace, politics or academia, where people are stroking each other’s ego without producing anything of value.

Quite honestly, survey filling can be rewarding if you know where to find these. I don’t have that talent, or more to the point, I don’t have the interest. It wasn’t long before I realized that pointing me to other survey sites was making this guy about $1.00-1.75 per referral. In other words, he kept his website free because he found ways to be compensated. I would have to sign up for about 15-20 websites to receive 10 bucks from him. You do the math. He was going to essentially keep half his money.

Are free websites therefore as scammy as paid ones? I’m not sure I have an honest answer to this question. I’ve decided to keep TechJobs free for now, because I firmly believe there are jobs out there available for telecommuters that do *not* involve paying a cent for this information.

If *anyone* has ever stayed on a survey site long enough to actually get direct payment for your opinion, I’d love to hear your experiences. Incidently, if you spam me with your affiliate link, I’ll simply ignore and delete your comment.

My little venture yesterday only did one thing for me: it brought me close to poking my own eyes out with the sharpest tool I could find on my desk. I concluded that as hard as it is to build a website up or a blog, I find this kind of work 1000 times more rewarding than filling out my personal information over and over again for…… essentially nothing.